"As for our Father the Pope, I would he were like the star Which moves not. Very well see it The sailors who are on the watch. By this star they go and come, And hold their course and their way. They call it the Polar Star. It is fixed, very unchangeable: All the others move, And alter their places and turn, But this star moves not. They make a contrivance which cannot lie, By the virtue of the magnet. An ugly and brownish stone, To which iron spontaneously joins itself, They have: and they observe the right point, After they have caused a needle to touch it, And placed it in a rush: They put it in the water, without any thing more, And the rush keeps it on the surface; Then it turns its point direct Towards the star with such certainty, That no man will ever have any doubt of it; Nor will it ever for any thing go false. When the sea is dark and hazy, That they can neither see star nor moon, Then they place a light by the needle, And so they have no fear of going wrong: Towards the star goes the point, Whereby the mariners have the skill To keep the right way. It is an art which cannot fail." It may be very properly inferred, from the fact that the poet does not merely allude to the compass, but describes it and the polar star at some length, that it was not generally known, and, in fact, had been lately introduced into the Mediterranean. Whence it had been introduced there, we shall learn as we proceed. The second historical mention of the compass occurs in a description of Palestine by Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, in the year 1218, in which is the following passage:--"The loadstone is found in India, to which, from some hidden cause, iron spontaneously attaches itself. The moment an iron needle is touched by this stone, it at once points towards the North Star, which, though the other stars revolve, is fixed as if it were the axis of the firmament: from whence it has become necessary to those who navigate the seas." Brunetto Latini, a grammarian of Florence, and preceptor of Dante, settled in Paris about the year 1260, and composed a work entitled the "Treasure," in which he distinctly describes the process and the consequence of magnetizing a needle. He also went to England, and, in a letter of which fragments have been published, writes thus:--"Friar Bacon showed me a magnet, an ugly and black stone, to which iron doth willingly cling: you rub a needle upon it, the which needle, being placed upon a point, remains suspended and turns against the Star, even though the night be stormy and neither star nor moon be seen; and thus the mariner is guided on his way." The Italian Jesuit Riccioli, in his work upon Geography and Hydrography, states, that before 1270, the French mariners used "a magnetized needle, which they kept floating in a small vessel of water, supported on two tubes, so as not to sink."